Decaf

Coffee is bliss. Coffee is torment.

What flavor! What complexity! And yet, to drink the undiluted nectar of the gods is to condemn myself to a jittery hell of anxious tailspins.

And yet… While I appreciate a good night’s rest, neither can I disabuse myself completely of my need. Life is too hard to not find some external impetus.

Enter decaf. The coffee addict’s compromise. A Faustian bargain if there ever was one, the macchiato of Mephistopheles. While it doesn’t quite do the trick, it also doesn’t leave my temple in ruins.

It’s Friday, the end of the long-suffering work week. I line up with the other hopefuls bent on supplication. The coffee shop is fancy, which means there’s a line of ten people at 7:57 before the 8 a.m. open.

Shuffling inside, I find another vice. Donuts of every shape and color. Sprinkles, nuts, chocolate. They even have “old-fashioned” ones, which must be more virtuous through their association with the huddled masses of my city’s shuttered factories.

“Yeah?” the woman asks, uninterested in my prayer of desperation.

“A decaf Americano,” I croak, my throat cracking from its want.

“Anything else?”

“A donut if you may, m’lady. Of the sprinkled variety.”

The donut is shoved in my hand without ceremony, my reusable cup shuttled into the depths of the shop where it might find its fulfillment.

Soon, I’m pushed into a spot by the machines, the La Marzocco belching out a symphony of steam. Half a dozen of us shelter there, eagerly clutching our baked goods while we wait. Should I eat the donut now? Or should I hide my shame and scatter my crumbs upon the home front? I can’t help but think of the Parable of the Sower, suspecting I might be the seed the farmer tossed away.

“Fred!” the barista shouts, holding a cup aloft.

The cup looks puny in his muscled, tattooed arms, as if it knows its bound for a sad creature such as me. It certainly looks like my cup, though my name sounds nothing like this Fred character.

“Fred!” he shouts again.

No one moves anything but their eyes, searching for the offender. We’re all like scared squirrels in a forest, unwilling to move as the panther passes by. I decide to take my chances.

“Thank you,” I yell over the roar of the steam wand. “Is it decaf?”

“Yeah,” the barista shouts back, pointing to the milk bar. There, amongst the artisanal sugars and sugar-like sugar substitutes sits a bottle of half-and-half. Is that what he thinks I said?

“No,” I say, holding up my free hand in apology. “Decaf.”

The barista only nods, giving me a thumbs-up as he moves back to his machine. I hang my head, defeated.

Back at the apartment – the donut long-since devoured on my thirty-second walk – I sit and face the coffee. Like a chess match with a clever demon, for a time, I only consider my options. I can’t go back and get another coffee. For one thing, I don’t have two hours to wait in the line again. For another, I’m sure they’d make me pay full price, and I can’t afford to take out a second mortgage.

Eventually, I decide the die is cast. I take a sip, waiting for the sky to fall. I close my eyes, taking one breath after another. Perhaps my pulse is normal? It’s not something an anxious person should ever choose to focus on, but I don’t yet detect any sort of strange arrhythmia. I take another sip. It’s really most delectable. The flavors dance upon my tongue, chasing the sweet maidens of the vanquished donut. Sweet. Bitter. This, I think, is just another metaphor for life.

Soon I’m imbibing like a drunk, gulping between each breath. It’s far too hot, but how could that compare to the magic I’m inhaling? My tongue doth protest too much. I’m Hamlet’s ruler of the nutshell, a king of infinite space. Besides, I was meant to start work nearly thirty minutes ago, and my boss won’t accept coffee as an excuse. He’s a Folgers man, a stern, mustachioed warden of bygone rituals. The best part of waking up.

I stand, hurrying toward my laptop. But then, it hits. The coffee, it seems, was fully-leaded. My head spins, and I barely catch myself against the wall. My heart now pounds, sounding the drums of war. I know, somewhere deep within me, my kidneys think I’m poisoned. They’re pumping adrenaline in search of rescue, hoping I can fight or flee.

But where could I ever hope to run to? The poison is within me. The poison is me. I stagger to my desk, flinging myself down onto the chair. Everything is ergonomic, calibrated for my aging frame. But with the coffee boiling in my veins, none of that matters. I know only power, my snarling visage like an Ozymandias who never fell asunder. I open my laptop and begin typing with a fury. Two-hundred words-per-minute fly off my fingers, bullets chasing the Red Baron of productivity. The calvary has come.

In the end, I do an entire morning’s worth of work in twenty minutes. Already, I can sense the accolades waiting to pour in. Soon, a thousand notifications will chime, each one from some higher-up waiting to laud my work. I will enter Rome like an imperator, my laurels thick with bounty. My boss will lean in to whisper sic transit gloria, except, for me, he’ll make an exception.

“Glory will never fade for you, my little underling,” he whispers. “Now, let’s talk about that vacation you requested.”

As I come to, the fog of the coffee lifting, I can still hear the chanting of the crowds. This, clearly, is something decaf could never be capable of. My deluge of heart beats has slowed to a trickle, and in their wake, I have the distinct feeling I may still be dreaming. After all, wasn’t it one of the great German philosophers who said the universe exists only in the mind? Coffee is bliss. Coffee is torment.

Perhaps I’ll have another cup.